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Uncle Tom, Topsy, Sambo, Simon Legree, little Eva: their names are American bywords, and all of them are characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's remarkable novel of the pre-Civil War South. Uncle Tom's Cabin was revolutionary in 1852 for its passionate indictment of slavery and for its presentation of Tom, "a man of humanity," as the first black hero in American fiction. Labeled racist and condescending by some contemporary critics, it remains a shocking,...
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Mark Twain's tale of a boy's picaresque journey down the Mississippi on a raft conveyed the voice and experience of the American frontier as no other work had done before. When Huck escapes from his drunken father and the 'sivilizing' Widow Douglas with the runaway slave Jim, he embarks on a series of adventures that draw him to feuding families and the trickery of the unscrupulous 'Duke' and 'Dauphin'. Beneath the exploits, however, are more serious...
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English
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From the New York Times bestselling author of The Good Lord Bird, winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction, Deacon King Kong, Five-Carat Soul, and Kill 'Em and Leave, a James Brown biography.
In the days before the Civil War, a runaway slave named Liz Spocott breaks free from her captors and escapes into the labyrinthine swamps of Maryland’s eastern shore, setting loose a drama...
In the days before the Civil War, a runaway slave named Liz Spocott breaks free from her captors and escapes into the labyrinthine swamps of Maryland’s eastern shore, setting loose a drama...
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English
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Edgar Awards
Medfield Historical Fiction - 1700s–1800s
Medfield Historical Fiction for Adults - Adventurous
Medfield Historical Fiction for Adults - North America
Medfield Historical Fiction - 1700s–1800s
Medfield Historical Fiction for Adults - Adventurous
Medfield Historical Fiction for Adults - North America
Description
In the fall of 1863, the Union army is in control of the Mississippi River. Much of Louisiana, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge, is occupied. The Confederate army is retreating toward Texas, and being replaced by Red Legs, irregulars commanded by a maniacal figure, and enslaved men and women are beginning to glimpse freedom. When Hannah Laveau, an enslaved woman working on the Lufkin plantation, is accused of murder, she goes on the run with...
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English
Description
Tawawa House in many respects is like any other American resort before the Civil War. Situated in Ohio, this idyllic retreat is particularly nice in the summer when the Southern humidity is too much to bear. The main building, with its luxurious finishes, is loftier than the white cottages that flank it, but then again, the smaller structures are better positioned to catch any breeze that may come off the pond. And they provide more privacy, which...
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Series
Elm Creek Quilts volume 4
Language
English
Description
When Sylvia Compson discovers evidence of her ancestors' involvement with the Underground Railroad, it raises the historical issue of the use of quilts as a method of signalling fugitive slaves.
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English
Description
"It is 1864 and Eliza Spooner's husband Will has joined the Kansas volunteers to fight the Confederates, leaving her with their two children and in charge of their home and land. Eliza is confident that he will return home, and she helps pass the months making a special quilt to keep Will warm during his winter months in the army. When the unthinkable happens, she takes in a a woman and child who have been left alone and made vulnerable by the war,...
9) Remembrance
Author
Language
English
Description
"For centuries, there have been rumors, whispers in the fields and behind sheets of laundry. Remembrance - a place of sanctuary of freedom - and perhaps magic. If you could make it there. Now, three women, separated by time and oceans, but alike in desperation, seek its refuge. 1791, Haiti: The island is on the brink of revolution, and Abigail is forced to flee with her mistress, leaving her children behind. 1857, New Orleans: Promised her freedom...
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
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Description
"Traveling along the path of the Underground Railroad from Virginia to Michigan, from the Indigenous nations around the Great Lakes, to the Black refugee communities of Canada, In the Upper Country weaves together unlikely stories of love, survival, and familial upheaval that map the interconnected history of the peoples of North America in an entirely new and resonant way"--
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English
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This novel is set in 1855, when Blackface minstrelsy is the most popular form of entertainment in a nation about to be torn apart by the battle over slavery. Henry Sims, a fugitive slave and a brilliant musician, has escaped to Philadelphia. He befriends James Douglass, leader of the Virginia Harmonists, a minstrel troup. A Free State is both a riveting chase novel and a searing parable of liberty and its costs. Charged with narrative tension and...
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Language
English
Description
"On a moonless night in the spring of 1851, a young slave makes a bid for freedom with only the North Star to guide him in a stunning new work of historical fiction from bestselling novelist and historian Robert Morgan. In Chasing the North Star, Morgan brings to full and vivid life the story of a runaway slave named Jonah Williams, who, on his eighteenth birthday, flees the South Carolina plantation on which he was born with only a few saved coins,...
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English
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Description
"Already excerpted in the New Yorker, Black Cloud Rising is a compelling and important historical novel that takes us back to an extraordinary moment when enslaved men and women were shedding their bonds and embracing freedom By fall of 1863, Union forces had taken control of Tidewater Virginia, and established a toehold in eastern North Carolina, including along the Outer Banks. Thousands of freed slaves and runaways flooded the Union lines, but...
Author
Language
English
Description
"The paths of three young Black women in pre-Civil War Philadelphia unexpectedly-and dangerously-collide in this dramatic debut novel inspired by the explosive history of a city at war with itself. Philadelphia, 1837. When nineteen-year-old Charlotte escaped from the deteriorating White Oaks plantation four years ago, she'd expected freedom to look completely different from her former life as an enslaved housemaid. Instead, she's locked away playing...
Author
Series
Elm Creek Quilts volume 14
Language
English
Description
In 1859, a runaway slave and quilter named Joanna traveled the Underground Railroad to Elm Creek Farm -- only to be captured and forcibly returned to Virginia. More than a century later, Master Quilter Sylvia Bergstrom Compson recovers a bundle of letters that Joanna wrote from South Carolina. Reading transports Sylvia into the thick of the Civil War and to Edisto Island in the years afterward, where a group of ex-slaves formed a quilting circle.
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Medfield Historical Fiction for Adults - BIPOC
Medfield Historical Fiction for Adults - North America
Medfield Juneteenth Display 2024
More Lists...
Medfield Historical Fiction for Adults - North America
Medfield Juneteenth Display 2024
More Lists...
Description
"Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage--and lost his mother and all memory of her when he was a child--but he is also gifted with a mysterious power. Hiram almost drowns when he crashes a carriage into a river, but is saved from the depths by a force he doesn't understand, a blue light that lifts him up and lands him a mile away. This strange brush with death forces a new urgency on Hiram's private rebellion. Spurred on by his improvised plantation...
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Series
Language
English
Description
The classic story of a boy who makes his own rules and the small Missouri town where he and his friends experience the adventures of a lifetime. Filled with schoolyard pranks, buried treasures, spooky caves, secret gangs, and grave robbers, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is entertainment of the highest order. The clever schemes of its eponymous hero--from tricking his friends into completing his chores to sneaking into his own funeral--are the stuff...
Author
Pub. Date
[2023]
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Born the daughter of an enslaved woman and a Louisiana plantation owner, Jeannette Bébinn is raised alongside her white half sister--until her father suddenly dies. His vindictive wife refuses twelve-year-old Jeannette her inheritance and sells her into slavery. Now on her own, Jeannette must fight the injustices she faces because of her mixed race. She escapes enslavement and travels from Mississippi to Philadelphia to New York to Ohio, all while...
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